The Victors

Kansas State 31-14 Michigan
7-6, Big Ten 3-5

The worst part of last night's/this morning's embarrassing defeat at the hands of the epithetless Wildcats was how utterly unsurprising the whole debacle was. We looked exactly like you'd expect a Brady Hoke-coached club to look: the offense was impotent, the defense was at sea, & the coaches had evidently not spend a single minute watching game film of K-State football. The most typical play of our defense all year is the missed assignment, the sight after on opponent's touchdown of two defensive backs pointing at each other, unaware of which of them (if not both) had completely missed his assignment. On the offensive side, we had no running game against a sad sack run defense, leaving the entire game in the hands of a true freshman quarterback making his first collegiate start. Anyone foolish enough to have gleaned signs of a bright future from our loss to Ohio State (42-41 is still a loss, folks, & "moral victories" are children's fantasies) was slapped in the face with the cold, hard reality of Michigan football under Brady Hoke. We are a bad football club, & we're getting worse. The offense simply does not work, & no dreams of "the right recruits" is going to change that. For all defensive coordinator Greg Mattison's success in the N.F.L., the defense blow more assignments than they make & appear generally hapless & lethargic. We finish the year 7-6, but even that is misleading, as by rights we should have lost to both Akron & Connecticut; those hypothetical losses would have made us bowl ineligible & we should have finished this year's campaign at 5-7. I will repeat myself, for emphasis's sake: we are a bad football club, & under Brady Hoke we are becoming even worse.

Brady Hoke must be fired. Those who counsel "patience" are deluding themselves. There is not a raft of superstar recruits set to arrive who will save us from the basic facts that Brady Hoke & his staff are outcoached at halftime by every opposing staff they face. The best players in the world cannot succeed if they are not properly coached, & the lazy, stupid players who currently disgrace the name of bear the torch for the valiant Wolverines are not properly coached. We will never uphold the legacy of Michigan football so long as we are coached by Brady Hoke & his bumbling staff. Brady Hoke must be fired.

Next: 2014, another season of rank ineptitude on the field & the sidelines, & endless sadness & frustration amongst the Maize & Blue faithful. I should dearly love to be proven wrong, to be made an object of ridicule for panicking on the cusp of a new golden age, to be made to eat the words "Brady Hoke must be fired." Alas, in a hideous inversion of Coach Schembechler's sacred promise, we will never again by champions as long as Coach Hoke remains. Brady Hoke must be fired.

Go Blue!